June/July 2026 Vol 25.3Nutrition Education in Medical School: What Should It Include?
Authors: Jeffrey S Bland PhD
Abstract:
The April 28, 2026 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association contains an article authored by Samantha Anderer focused on the 53 medical schools that are committing to 40 hours of nutrition training for their medical students, The question raised in this article is "what will they teach" A previous article in the same journal by Wu et al. discussed the nature of controversy about different diet approaches for the reduction of heart disease risk and indicated that more than a superficial understanding of nutrition is required to guide communication with patients as to the diet relationships to heart disease. The point of the article was that a physician needs understanding of the physiological impact of the diet that includes the contribution of the all the components of the diet beyond that of the macronutrient content alone.
